Is Alternative Medicine a Symptom of American Decadence?

Despite a doctor's argument that the U.S. is like the Roman Empire, interest in homeopathy isn't a sign of American decline

David Colquhoun, Ph.D., F.R.S., throws the book at us Americans—in fact, all six volumes of Gibbon—in the final paragraph of his post against alternative medicine studies:

Senator Tom Harkin's promotion of NCCAM has done for the U.S.
reputation in medicine what Dick Cheney did for the U.S. reputation in
torture. It is hard to look at the USA from outside without thinking of
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Dr. Colquhoun seems to consider this coda a harmless provocation, irrelevant to his main points. But it's offensive. We Americans have been comparing ourselves to decadent Romans at least since the 1830s, but just because we use the d-word ourselves doesn't mean we like hearing others do so.

It's also absurd to somehow link the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine with waterboarding. Homeopathy in particular has a long history of liberal ties, especially to the early women's rights movement. Of course, that doesn't make it effective or ineffective. Dr. Colquhoun has every right to call it bad science, but not to associate it with Dick Cheney, who appears to be a experienced and satisfied patient of mainstream cardiology.

Nor is American interest in alternative medicine some weird global outlier, as Dr. Colquhoun implies. Polls show 70 percent of Germans believe in it, according to a Science journal website. Or would Dr. Colquhoun reply the numbers demonstrate they're all crypto-Nazis at heart?

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture, and an affiliate of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center.